Richard J File-Muriel

University of New Mexico | UNM · Department of Spanish & Portuguese

In many varieties of Spanish, syllable-and word-final /s/ is subject to a process of reduction from sibilance [s] through aspiration [h] to deletion. Sociolinguistic studies have traditionally used a three-way classification scheme on the basis of impressionistic coding; however, in the last decade, instrumental acoustic measurements have been favo...

Review of Managing Multiculturalism: Indigeneity and the Struggle for Rights in Colombia. Jean E. Jackson. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019, 308 pp. $30.00, paper. ISBN 9781503607699.Uni

Variability abounds in speech. According to usage-based accounts, lexical representations reflect phonetic variants of words resulting from contextual conditioning. Because faster speech contexts promote durational shortening of words and segments, words that occur more often in fast speech may be more reduced than words commonly used in slow speec...

Mixed-effects models have been advocated to account for the hierarchical nature of most data used in variationist studies. This study uses a corpus of eight speakers of Spanish spoken in Cali, Colombia to test the effect of two varying intercepts, one for speaker and one for word, on the fixed effects obtained for three dependent variables relevant...

‘Special reduction’ refers to instances of extreme phonetic reduction which is restricted to particular words or phrases, usually grammaticalizing constructions (going to > [gə̃ɾ̃ə̃]), greetings (hi from how are you), discourse markers (Spanish o sea > sa), or other sequences that are often used together. On the basis of data from English, Brazilia...

Research has shown that frequency conditions the variable realization of sounds. However, the literature has not addressed whether the frequency of the individual word forms, or form frequency, has a larger conditioning effect than the combined frequencies of the members of the paradigm to which the forms belong, or lemma frequency. Monofactorial c...

This study looks at a gradient approach to s-realization and argues that a categorical approach overlooks many subtleties in explaining acoustic variation.

This study examines the ability of listeners to store and recall indexical properties in segmental-length utterances, including details regarding the socially-constructed category “gender” as well as information about individual voices. The idea that indexical properties are irrelevant to speech recognition is a core assumption of generative phonol...

Whereas previous studies of Spanish s-weakening have relied on impressionistic coding, the present study examines temporal and gradient acoustic details in the production of /s/ by eight females from Cali, Colombia, during sociolinguistic interviews. We propose a metric for quantifying s-realization by employing three scalar-dependent variables: s-...

This study examines the relationship between lexical frequency and s-lenition in Barranquillero Spanish, looking at lexical frequency as a scalar variable. A quantitative analysis of /s/ in words of different lexical frequencies, in which productions from a reading task were submitted to auditory acoustical analysis, reveals that the single most im...

This study examines the relationship between lexical frequency and s -lenition in Barranquillero Spanish, looking at lexical frequency as a scalar variable. A quantitative analysis of /s/ in words of different lexical frequencies, in which productions from a reading task were submitted to auditory acoustical analysis, reveals that the single most i...

Previous studies of s-weakening in Spanish have relied almost exclusively on the impressionistic coding of /s/. Not only is auditory transcription invariably influenced by the transcriber’s background, but temporal and gradient acoustic details about the sound are concealed when tokens are represented symbolically. The present study examines the pr...

This article reports on a quantitative analysis of /s/ in words of different lexical frequencies in a cohesive speech community. Speakers from Barranquilla, Colombia between 20-26 years of age read approximately 100 sentences, containing words with s + consonant sequences. These productions were submitted to auditory acoustical analysis; visual ins...

Little is known about the interaction between competence-based and performance-based constraints, but production and processing of speech are clearly influenced by both. Although the present study does not address this interaction, it does add to the growing body of literature on the role of performance constraints in constituent ordering. The aim...

The perception of voicing categories is affected by speaking rate, so that listeners’ category boundaries on a VOT continuum shift to a lower value when syllable duration decreases [Miller & Volaitis, 1989; Volaitis & Miller, 1992]. Previous rate normalization effects have been found using computer-generated stimuli. This study examines the effect...

Previous investigations analyzing phonological variation in Spanish have pointed out that phonetic context is an important factor for predicting different variants of /s/. In many studies (Cedergren, 1973; Poplack, 1979, 1980, 1986; Ranson, 1993; Samper Padilla, 1990; Terrell, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1986, etc.), it is claimed that /s/ aspiration is more...